Total’s Egina FPSO arrives in Nigeria, ready for integration

Nigeria’s oil industry records a milestone as Total’s Egina Floating Production Storage Offloading(FPSO) arrived at the Port of Lagos in Nigeria on January 25, 2017. The Egina FPSO, features a length of 330 meters long and a width of 61 meters with production capacity of 200,000 barrels of oil per day (approximately 10% of the country’s total oil production). It is described as the largest ever installed in Nigeria and the biggest ship in West Africa.

Egina FPSO, was built for Total Upstream Nigeria Limited, (TUPNI) by Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI), sailed away from the quay side at Samsung Yard in Geoje, South Korea, on October 31, 2017.

Egina FPSO is currently berthed at the newly built 500-metre FPSO integration quayside at the SHI-MCI Yard, Ladol island, Lagos where the integration of 6 locally fabricated modules will take place over the next few months. This is a first for Nigeria and in fact for Africa.

The arrival of the Total Egina FPSO to LADOL Free Zone is an historic moment for Nigerian local content as Egina is the largest investment project currently on-going in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria. The project also fulfills the aspirations and objectives of the Federal Government of Nigeria in terms of employment generation, capacity building and industrial capability development.

Speaking at the arrival ceremony, Managing Director of Total, Mr. Nicolas Teraz, stated that Egina is the deepest offshore development carried out so far in Nigeria, with water depths over 1,500 meters.

He explained that the FPSO had been designed for 25 years of operations and in addition to producing 200,000 barrels of oil per day (at plateau), the operations will generate significant activities for local contractors in various sectors and continue to provide avenues for the training and development of Nigerians in various domains.

“Being the first project to be launched after the enactment of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act in 2010, Egina is advancing Nigerian content to record levels and has by far the highest quantum of local content completed for any oil and gas project in Nigeria, but also for Total’s projects worldwide,” Nicolas Terraz, the managing director of Total Nigeria, told Vanguard.

Terraz added that several technological feats have been recorded by the various entities involved inthe Egina project.

The Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala-Usman said that the arrival of the Egina FPSO to Lagos has vindicated the federal government’s liberalisation policy, adding that the NPA remains committed to ensuring that operators compete favourably.

“The industry has been liberalised; I believe we are all familiar with the monopoly around the oil and gas terminals. So for the FPSO to come to Lagos shows that any investor can take any vessel to any oil and gas to any terminal in the country. Every terminal is free to receive oil and gas cargo and any FPSO, and that enable all investors to have the comfort that there is no specific location that is designated for that purpose,” she said.

“Today we se have seen the justification for liberalization whereby you can take any oil and gas vessel to any location in the country. All terminal operators need to compete and the NPA seeks to ensure that there is a level playing field for everybody to compete favorably as supposed to having a monopoly which stifles investors by insisting on using certain terminals that might not provide favorable financial position,” she added.

The Egina oilfield, which is being developed at the cost of $16 billion, would come on stream at the end of 2018.

Samsung Heavy Industries had won the contract for the building of the FPSO at the cost of $3.3 billion after a competitive bidding process.

Samsung Heavy Industries Nigeria Limited together with its joint venture partner established SHI-MCI FZE (SHI-MCI) as a joint venture entity. The SHI-MCI facility is located at Tarkwa Bay, also known as West Africa’s first fabrication and integration yard and is on a land mass spanning 121,000m2 and has a 502 metre long deep quay wall that is the largest in Africa.

Six out of the 18 modules of the Egina FPSO were fabricated in Nigeria which is a first time achievement for the country.

Samsung invested over $300 million for the construction of the fabrication yard and through SHI-MCI, has committed to technology transfer and training of local capacity in the field of shipbuilding and offshore plant manufacturing technologies.

The Egina project has set the bar very high in terms of compliance with Local Content laws with over 1,000 Nigerians employed in various capacities.

The Egina field was discovered by TUPNI in 2003 within the Oil Mining Licence 130 (OML 130), some 200 kilometres south of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Total operates the project with a 24% interest in it, alongside CNOOC (45%), Petrobras (16%), SAPETRO (15%) and NNPC (10%).